Tuesday, 8 September 2015

Presque Isle

It's very strange how the most unexpected things so
considerably move and influence us. I've written before, in background links at
the bottom, about how a pair of cheap and popular TV movies changed my life; and
I'll never forget the time when I was a small child I saw Kate Bush's rock
video Cloudbusting in the cinema,
see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF813vmbcQY.
It haunted and consumed me for many years, and I had no idea why. It was a very
long time later that I discovered that the track is a ballad about the life and
works of Wilhelm Reich. Did a part of me predict in advance where my adult life
would take me? See here for more details: http://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/programme-36-podcast-peter-robbins.html.
There was another such event in my life that I've never written about before
despite it being extremely formative for me. It's one of the most unexpected
and it concerns a place I've never been to in my life, before or since, and had
never even heard of before until that auspicious moment.

Presque Isle is a peninsula on the south shore
of Lake Erie, one of the Great
Lakes. The Great Lakes, as their name
suggests, are a series of huge expanses of fresh water in North America that lie roughly on the border
between Canada
and the United States of America.
They're so big that they're generally regarded as inland seas and Presque Isle
sits on the small segment of the coast given to the state of Pennsylvania,
creating a natural harbour. Its name comes from presqu'île, meaning "peninsula" in French, literally
"almost an island". It is a remarkable geological formation; a
massive six-mile long sand spit that was created by the interaction of the
prevailing anticlockwise currents of Lake Erie with the
shoals of the south shore. Presque Isle is not a specific object in itself, but
the effect of an action. Sand washed in by the current accumulated at the
western end of the shoal a few thousand years ago and piled up to form the
infant peninsula. Since then it has been moving steadily eastwards along the
south coast of Lake Erie like a slow motion wave of
sediment, by about half a mile per century. The current steadily washes away
the west coast of Presque Isle and deposits sand on the eastern shore, by the
mouth of Presque Isle bay. This creates a unique natural wonder in that the
biological landscape changes from east to west because the land gets older as
you travel westwards; this makes Presque Isle a geographical time capsule. On
the eastern extremity you have the newest deposits, just banks of sand and mud
with the typical beach life. A few hundred yards inland you start to see small
sand dunes with grass. Further west you get bushes and shrubs, further still
small trees. By the time you reach the opposite shore the habitat has developed
into a full-sized developed deciduous forest. This is termed a "climax
forest" because after that it's time for the waves to take back what
they've given, and the land is swept away into the lake by the relentless longshore
drift. However, this is only part of the natural cycle of Presque Isle;
everything swept away on the west shore is deposited on the east to begin the
process all over again, for five or six hundred years until the spit has moved
on and the cycle turns again. This precious wonder has made Presque Isle a site
of special scientific interest; it has the status of a Pennsylvania
state park. The Erielhonen Indians were the first people known to have lived on
Presque Isle; because its shape resembles a human arm they believed that it was
the arm of the Great Spirit. In the colonial era Britain
and France
battled for it and in the 19th century it was fought over in the 1812
Anglo-American War. There are the ruins of forts everywhere, making it a site
of special historical and archaeological interest too. Today it is a popular
tourist attraction with miles of winding roads and footpaths. Its fresh beaches
are attractive for bathing and water-sports in the summer. There is an annual fun
weekend there of sports, hiking, amusements, arts and crafts and other
attractions, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zltXdDB91Xs.
In winter cold winds from Canada
blow in to make it freezing there. Interestingly there was a UFO incident on
Presque Isle in 1966, a multiple witness CE-3. Despite attempts to debunk it I
still think it holds water, but that's a story for another time, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO7-v10TG5Q.

This information all came to me in a single one-hour documentary
I saw in about 1993 or 94 on the Discovery Channel or a similar platform; unfortunately
I can't find a recording of it anywhere online. It discussed the future of
Presque Isle and how intervention was going to be needed because the cyclical
action described above would continue to move the formation eastwards. The
beaches on the western side were being eroded away. In fact at several times in
the 20th century Presque Isle- "almost an island" became a real
island when freak winter storms washed the causeway all the way through
severing the main body of the peninsula from the shore until the link was
repaired. The original plan involved a tried and tested technique called
"sand nourishment"; one used on many seaside beaches. Sand is brought
in from another location and deposited on the beach to replace that which is lost
to erosion. The problem with sand nourishment is that it has to be a continuous
process that costs continuous money; half a million tons of sand are needed
every year and it all has to be driven in by lorry. Then in the 1990's a new
plan was proposed, one which it was believed would halt the erosion altogether.
In a single one-off operation that would cost the equivalent of three years of
sand nourishment, a series of huge offshore groynes would be constructed in the
surf. However, as the documentary stated with scorching poignancy: "it
might destroy the magic of Presque Isle forever." The beaches on the west
side would be saved, and might even expand out to the groynes, but without the
sediment flow from those beaches, the eastern end of the formation would begin
to erode; all the new sandbanks would never develop into climax forested land
and would instead be returned immediately to the lake. Presque Isle would
become a static location, halted in its patient, tireless and millennial march
eastwards. The whole peninsula would eventually become forest and a lot of the
unique seaside habitats would disappear. To be fair, if Presque Isle were left
to nature it would eventually be destroyed anyway; in a few thousand years it
would fall off the eastern end of the shoals and be gone forever. The
advantages of sand nourishment are that there would be no erosion at the
eastern side and that part of the feature would continue to inch eastwards
while leaving behind the western half. In a few centuries we'd see a very
differently-shaped Presque Isle, but still one recognizable in terms of its biological
and geological environment. Nevertheless the breakwater plan was approved and
the US Army Corps of Engineers built fifty-eight groynes, each 150 feet long
350 feet apart; and 200 to 300 feet offshore... these kinds of activities tend
always to involve the military for some reason. Another effect of the
breakwaters is that the coast's clean western skyline has been ruined. One of
the beaches is called "SunsetBeach"
because on a clear evening you can get such a lovely view of the sun descending
to the horizon. Today the view is sullied by these huge elongated piles of
rock. Ironically the plan has only partially worked anyway; a certain amount of
sand nourishment is still needed to top up that accumulated by the breakwater
system, see: http://old.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20011104erie1104p8.asp.
Tellingly, and fatefully for Presque Isle, such a breakwater construction could
never been done on an oceanic coast because they are banned at the seaside for
being environmentally damaging. They got away with it at Presque Isle on a
technicality... "Ah, but Lake Erie is a lake and not the sea, isn't it?" It's a pity that the documentary is
not online because it's extremely well-made. It has a lovely score with electronic
pan pipe music and piano melodies that I can still hear in my head to this day. As
I watched the TV programme I was almost electrocuted by some of the most
powerful emotions I'd ever experienced. I found somewhere private in the house
and broke down, my heart shattered. It's difficult to describe in words exactly
how it made me feel. I wept like a woman for several hours non-stop. I dreamed
about Presque Isle for many nights afterwards, and I was unable to think about
anything else for several days. I cheered myself up with violent fantasies
about planting dynamite on the groynes and blowing them to pieces. Why, with
all the reasons to be sad in this world, did the plight of Presque Isle rip
into me the way it did? Maybe it's a symptom of how mentally fragile I was in
those days. If I'd first heard about the story today it wouldn't affect me the
way it did back then. This is not to say that the taming of the natural wonder
of Presque Isle was would go unnoticed by me. It still does represent the
conquest of nature by the fallen man; in fact it's an almost textbook example. I
would certainly mention it on HPANWO and it might even trigger one of my
"Boudica moments", see background links below. The first people to
see Presque Isle were a pre-Illuminati culture, the Erielhonen Indians. One way
or another, those people were almost all exterminated within five hundred years
when they made contact with the Illuminati-occupied West. The historian Michael
Wood calls this process very pithily "The end of sacred times, the triumph
of profane times." When they saw the outline of Presque Isle the
Erielhonen believed it was the arm of their universal divine principle, the
Great Spirit. Well I believe that the Great Spirit does exist, in whatever form
you wish to regard him. Maybe he spoke to me while I was watching that TV
programme. I know he wanted to tell me that he doesn't like being handcuffed,

3 comments:

Dear Ben. Very thoughtful and heartfelt post on a place I'd never heard of before.

Those Indians describing that process as the great spirit is very telling, it is the story of the inifinity of the natural cycle, not just the hypothetical state of nature that can never be pinned down or jettisoned but that but that which moves freely. The same place but always different, spontanious but purposeful.

I imagine this reflects in the man who's Ego is swept away but a true person of no fixed position remains nonetheless, a true meaning of authentic selfhood. We seem to want to capture and manipulate the transitory at the detriment of discovering the eternal pattern, the 'Great Spirit' that we also wish to contain with are limited self awareness by branding it with a definitive name, A Schizophrenic God a universe born of Ego consciousness projecting itself onto a landscape it wishes to control and a universe it fears.

Perhaps this place holds some secrets that certain individuals wish to preserve for other reasons?. Shame that documentary is not available but it's worth keeping an eye out as somebody somewhere has it I suspect. *****PLEASE GET INTOUCH IF YOU DO*****

Hi X. Cheers, glad you liked it. I'd like to go there. I always meant to. Will one day. It's a big subject, way beyond the scope of this article, but I DO think there is something suspicious about the behaviour of those in power, the way they are always gunning for anything natural and inspiring. I'll have to investigate more about that.

.

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